Phil Anastasia: Radano was a stellar coach who was loved by all

Al Radano's neatest trick as a baseball coach wasn't to produce the best team ever to take the field in South Jersey.

It wasn't to win 351 games and five state championships and usher Gloucester Catholic into a modern era of state prominence that continues to this day.

It was to do all that without making enemies.

That's not tough to do. That's next to impossible.

"I called him 'Peter Pan,' " said Gloucester Catholic athletic director Pat Murphy, Radano's nephew.

Murphy didn't mean that Radano, who died Monday at 70, was immature or childish.

He meant that Radano maintained qualities - an overriding sense of fun and fairness, a generosity of spirit, a playfulness untainted by a drive to get the better of others - that often seem out of place in competitive sports.

It was almost a magic act. Radano won all those games and all those titles with all those great teams - including his incomparable 1980 squad - and never rubbed anybody the wrong way.

The guys just floated above the resentment and jealousy that, unfortunately, often seem to be a part of these games. He was loyal to seniors. He got along with rivals. He even got along with parents.

Radano was immersed in the game at the highest level with an easygoing but confident approach to the sport that his former assistant, Audubon coach Rich Horan, laughingly described as "different."

But Radano never was consumed by it. He never lost perspective.

"You could walk in his house and never know he ever won a baseball game, much less a state championship," Murphy said.

Bishop Eustace coach Sam Tropiano, whose teams were fierce rivals of Radano's in the early 1990s, said the old coach was a "throwback" to a kinder, gentler time.

"He epitomized everything that was good about baseball and coaching," Tropiano said. "My lasting image of Al was [his] showing up for games in khaki pants and a maroon Gloucester Catholic golf shirt. He looked like Connie Mack.

"He never lost his cool, never argued with the umpires, never got upset."

Horan, an assistant under Radano in the early 1980s, said Radano always remembered that the game was for the players - not the coaches in the dugout, not the fans behind the fence.

"Al wanted every kid to be a part of something that was bigger than him," Horan said.

Rutgers-Camden coach Dennis Barth, who played under Radano and also was an assistant under him, recalled the Rams' making the state finals twice in the early 1990s.

Barth said Radano wanted to dress half of the student body for games.

"Al must have pinch-run 20 JV kids," Barth said. "I was coaching third, and I didn't know half these kids' names.

"But Al always wanted to make every kid feel special and part of every big game."

Here's the ultimate irony: The mildest of guys had the meanest of teams.

Think of all the baseball teams that have taken the field in South Jersey. Think of all the state champions, the Diamond Classic champions, the nationally ranked squads.

Radano was the coach of the best of them. His 1980 team might have been the most dominant team in South Jersey history - in any sport.

With future major-leaguer Bob Sebra going 10-0 with 118 strikeouts in 67 innings and John Yowler going 8-0 on the mound and batting an astounding .667, the Rams went 24-0. They just mauled opponents.

Murphy said there was a "Bronx Zoo" quality to those Rams because they were so talented and so untamed - part high school team for the ages, part traveling circus.

But the best part was that at the head of it all was this gentle soul whose stunning success should remind us all that, yes, sometimes nice guys finish first.